Willie Nelson and Van Morrison Join Up in the Studio

What's better than one musical legend in the studio? The answer is easy: Two of them, together, in the studio. That's what happened recently when Willie Nelson teamed up with Irish classic rock legend Van Morrison at a Pittsburgh-area studio earlier this month.

The two haven't specified what exactly they are working on, but just the fact they were in the studio together was cause for the staff at Church Recording Studio to marvel in surprise.

In fact, nobody at the studio knew was going on, initially, when a booking request from Ireland came in. “We didn’t take it too seriously at first, but after pushing them for some details, they revealed it was for Van Morrison,” studio producer Dave Hidek tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We actually believed them less at that point, so we asked for the standard deposit, and sure enough a check arrived the next day and we knew they were for real.

“A little later on, we got a call from Willie Nelson’s management to let us know that he’d be attending as well, which was an unbelievable thought, having those two guys collaborating in our space," marvels Hidek. "Having either one walk through our doors would in itself be a treat, to put it lightly, but both of them together would certainly be a historic experience.”

Hidek went on to praise Morrison as being musically "intense," while applauding Nelson's "vocal magic."

Nelson and Morrison were the headliners of the Pittsburgh-area date of the Outlaw Music Festival on Sept. 8. It was Morrison's first time playing Pittsburgh since 1973. His time in the studio marks his first collaboration with Nelson. There is no word on when the fruits of their studio session will be released.